When your son asks for a party featuring a character whose popularity peaked in the 1980s….
… it helps if that character was your personal favorite when you were his age. [I’m thinking Garfield wasn’t as popular during the movie releases in 2004 and 2006 as he was back when there were McDonald’s Garfield toys and coffee mugs at every yard sale. Either way, party supplies fell into the Hard-to-Find category everywhere I looked.] Fortunately for us, Gary convinced me to keep all of my “antique” childhood Garfield toys through all the moves we made during the first 8 years of our marriage. [Thank you, my dear husband!]
The Cake
In keeping with my whole Sara-Lee-Pound-Cake birthday cake creations [remember how I’d rather build something than bake something?], I was stumped. I needed something simple enough to do on the busiest weekend we had this summer! And I couldn’t figure out how I could carve pound cakes into the shape of Garfield because I am definitely not a Michelangelo type-of-person. My original idea was to make a LEGO cake and put a Garfield and Odie figure on top – or possibly have Garfield kicking Odie off the LEGO blocks, but Stephen had a LEGO cake last year, and well, “You know, Mom, you can’t do the same cake twice.”
So… I gave up on those ideas and decided to make a refrigerator cake along with one of my special childhood Garfield toys. I surprised Stephen with a trial run of the cake on his actual birthday [three days before the party] using about half a pound cake…
If you use your imagination, this is Garfield reaching into the fridge to grab something to eat…
This was an exercise in improvision, which means I used what we had on hand: Chiclets, Skittles, M&Ms, and Dots. Not only that, I accidentally picked up icing that had sprinkles in it, so the fridge ended up looking a bit dirty. Nevertheless, Stephen gave me a thumbs up that this is what he wanted for his birthday party!
Second time around, I used a full pound cake along with some of those strange pleather-rubbery Spongebob Crabby Patties. I couldn’t find the little Coca-Cola gummies, which would have been great to add. [Note: I liked the smaller one better; it was much easier to make and turned out a bit nicer.]
The Piñata
For the piñata, I had two choices: buy one for $80+, or make one. Stephen actually wanted an Odie piñata, so the former option was not only expensive, but it also was not available. In all honesty, I am afraid of paper mache, so I just used the same technique I’ve seen on the Wal-Mart shelves. Using a box, a hanger, some tissue paper, a large print-out of Odie that I glued onto a piece of cardboard, and some glue and scissors, I made an Odie pinata for everyone to kick.
Stephen wore his Garfield mask the first time he kicked it.
Would you believe my homemade piñata lasted longer than any other pinata we have ever bought? It lasted through that line-up more than once!
The Food
At a Garfield party, you must have LASAGNA! [In our case, Stouffer’s style.] The rest of the food consisted of mostly orange-colored snacks, bear-shaped snacks, donuts and M&Ms.
What was what:
- Gummy Pookies: Gummy bears
- Pooky Grahams: Teddy Grahams (assorted flavors)
- Nermal’s Nacho Cheez-its: Cheez-its
- Garfield’s Goldfish: Goldfish crackers
- Jon’s Donuts: Donuts
- Odie O’s: Cheerios (assorted flavors)
- Mom’s Fries: Veggie Straws
- Pooky Puffcorn: Cheetos
- The “Pound”Bars: Chex cereal
- To drink: Orange Crush, Orange Tampico, Orange Hi-C, Sunny D
We also made Jello Pinrolls and had some other things like cheese cubes and salad, but for some reason I lack photos of those.
The Activities
We set up our parties a bit like learning centers [ha.ha.]. This time we had:
Pin the Tail on Garfield (a homemade poster using an image I found on the web)
Garfield Stack-a-Snack Towers
Bowling with Garfield
On the Fence (knock Garfield off the “fence” (cardboard blocks) with a “tomato” (a red plastic practice t-ball connected to a string and hanging from the ceiling))
Mom’s Kitchen
and Target Practice.
Finally, we had the party favors, which included chocolate in gold/orange packages. The moms really liked those!
I still need to do some copyright research before I can post the files I made for our parties [when I will get around to doing that I have no idea…], but I wanted to capture our family’s special memory of Stephen’s 10th birthday before another month passes!
For other ideas (and much better cake designs!), visit our Garfield Pinterest Board.